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Lisa Simpson, in an ancient
episode of the famous TV series, tells us how to enjoy jazz music: “listen to
the notes they're not playing”. It's good advice in politics too.

In this context, it's
notable that two words are missing from the story we are being told by the
media about Falkirk West: “Dennis Canavan”.

The Labour selection process
in this constituency has become the biggest story in British politics this
week, and yet no one seems to be mentioning that this particular local branch
has had some serious selection issues before.

Canavan was the Member of
Parliament for Falkirk West (previously called West
Stirlingshire) from 1974-2000. In 1999, when the Scottish Parliament
for which he had long campaigned was first formed, he sought nomination to be
the Labour candidate in the seat he held at Westminster.

But there was a problem.
Dennis Canavan is the kind of charismatic, popular left wing politician that
Labour leaders loathe. They didn't want him in the new Parliament. In the mess
that followed, he declared the process for choosing the constituency's first
Labour Holyrood candidate “a rigged selection headed by mediocre stooges”.

So, instead, he stood for
the parliament as an independent. And won.

Not only did he win, he won
with the biggest majority in the parliament – having stood both in the local
constituency and on the regional list that the Holyrood election system uses to
ensure proportionality, he effectively won himself two seats – one in his
constituency (with 55% of the vote, to Labour's 19%) and one on the regional
list – securing more votes across the whole of Central Scotland than the Lib
Dems.

The Falkirk Wheel - Flickr/Photo Mojo Mike, some rights reserved

He stood again in 2003, and
again won with the biggest majority in the parliament, and then stood down –
endorsing the SNP, who now hold the seat (meaning that Labour has never held
this seat at Holyrood, despite the London media
declaring it 'safe Labour' at Westminster).
In his retirement, Canavan has taken on the job of chairing the yes campaign in
the independence referendum.

Dennis Canavan is one of the
legends of Scottish politics. His story is widely known, and, in his referendum
role, he's a regular in the Scottish press. The English media is focussing
whatever coverage isn't devoted to a tennis player from one corner of
Stirlingshire to a selection process in the other. And yet they don't bother to
place it in its recent historical context. This isn't a safe Labour seat, and,
more importantly, it is a classic example of a much more normal kind of Labour
selection stitch up.

The silence around this is
interesting. Because when the media don't tell us a key element of a story,
it's a good sign that they are trying to turn real life events into a morality
tale in which they get to teach us what's right and wrong.

And for the London
media, the fact that London Blairites are frequently guilty of stifling local
Labour democracy isn't the lesson they want us to learn. Because those people
are their friends. But when a union does it, it fits into a neat narrative. It
teaches the public and 'Red' Ed that any link with the unions is dangerous. It
forces Labour away from their one remaining left leaning influence.

If the allegations against
Unite – my union – in Falkirk West are true, then what they did was wrong. In a
perfectly legitimate attempt to get their candidate selected, they seem to have
crossed a line. But the failure of the media to mention the history echoes
their failure to report on hundreds of selections stitched up, like Canavan's,
by the Labour leadership over the last 20 years.

And that's the real scandal.
For a two decades at least, the Labour leadership have imposed on local parties
a drone of spineless and dull MPs with few beliefs and little capacity to
express them: a generation of leaders who try to enthuse us not with jazz, but
with dirge, and so leave it to the journalists to call the tune. And with journalists,
we can be sure they'll leave out all of the important notes.